Why an atheist based morality is inferior

OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Why an atheist based morality is inferior

Let's set up a simple game. We'll call it Moral. It is a two person non-zero sum game.

Suppose you have the following conditions for the game:
1) A moral choice that each player agrees exists. Each player has two available strategies: one, make the moral choice (do the right thing), and two, not make the moral choice (cheat).
2) Defined individually preferred payoffs based on adherence to this moral choice, where the payoff is greater for either player if that player can silently cheat the system.

The game does not rely on what the exact details of the moral choice is only that the players agree what it is. As it exists both players when acting with rational self interest will choose to cheat.

Suppose we add a third condition:
3) A third party judge that both players believe exists and is omniscient and fair. Both players also agree that this judge can punish cheating by reducing payoffs to zero.

The game does not rely on the judge actually existing only that the players believe he exists. The judge adds the component of complete knowledge. If the omniscient judge does not exist and there is no notion of complete knowledge the players are more prone to cheat the system.
 


Magus
High Level DonorModerator
Magus's picture
Posts: 592
Joined: 2007-04-11
User is offlineOffline
Anyone else see that the OP

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival.  It suggest that morals are only useful for the aftermath of life and not life.  If however you concede that morals are useful you have thus demonstrated that a deity is not needed in order for it or arise in a given social group.

Or do I have this wrong?


 

Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.


JillSwift
Superfan
JillSwift's picture
Posts: 1758
Joined: 2008-01-13
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:Anyone else see

Magus wrote:

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival.  It suggest that morals are only useful for the aftermath of life and not life.  If however you concede that morals are useful you have thus demonstrated that a deity is not needed in order for it or arise in a given social group.

Or do I have this wrong?

 

 

In the light of knowing OC is a theist, sure. Unto itself, it's too abstract.


 

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
JillSwift wrote:OrdinaryClay

JillSwift wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

If you mean blindingly obvious then I agree. Then it follows that the following is non-sense.

JillSwift wrote:

There is no such thing as an "atheist based" anything. As Hamby has said before:

    * No belief in god.
    * ???
    * Therefore: ???

 

And then you should be able to demonstrate that non-sense by replacing "???" with the endemic behavior(s) and come up with a conclusion that fits.

Which you've not done so far.

Likely because you can't.

Likely because atheists, like everyone else, vary too much in behavior to pin down psychologically as a group.


The question marks represent free variables. As we just demonstrated atheist beliefs result in behaviors as do Christian beliefs. If you believe the question marks can not be filled in for atheists then you must believe they can not be filled in for Christians. (Note: Sometimes the best teacher is experience)

 

Quote:

As for the OP: Why isn't it possible for a society's enforcement of broadly agreed upon morals/rules be the actor in the position of "judge"? That always seems to be the one workable godless moral system that gets totally ignored.

So you are agreeing the judge has an effect?


 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
JillSwift wrote:jcgadfly

JillSwift wrote:

jcgadfly wrote:

LIke this maybe (for the other side)?

1. Sins can be considered immoral acts.

2. Christians have a God that forgives them of their sins.

3. This forgiveness removes all penalties associated with sins.

4. Therefore, Christians have a greater potential to commit immoral acts.

That would be a great start.

We need evidence that atheists don't have the same sort of "remorse healing" mechanism as Christians sans God.
 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:OrdinaryClay

Magus wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Magus wrote:

who cares about perceived gain. I am talking about real gain.  A cheater could take more time solving a problem than those who don't cheat for many reason.  Example would be if the math involved is simple, but looking up the answer on their cheat sheet would take longer than just figuring it out.  I don't want to go into speculation as to why they cheat it is irrelevant to the point of this exchange.

Perceived gain is relevant and you admitted so when you said "and the accomplishment is diminished because it isn't really their own accomplishment". 

I didn't say the perceived gain was irrelavent, but that the speculation as to why they cheated was.  I asked who cares about the perceived gain? Not that it was irrelevant.

You had a good argument going there, but now you have resorted to word mincing. Perception can act as payoff as you speculated when you said "and the accomplishment is diminished because it isn't really their own accomplishment".


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:Anyone else see

Magus wrote:

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival. 

How did you get this from any of my words?
 


JillSwift
Superfan
JillSwift's picture
Posts: 1758
Joined: 2008-01-13
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:The

OrdinaryClay wrote:

The question marks represent free variables. As we just demonstrated atheist beliefs result in behaviors as do Christian beliefs. If you believe the question marks can not be filled in for atheists then you must believe they can not be filled in for Christians. (Note: Sometimes the best teacher is experience)

So, you are agreeing that atheism isn't a "viewpoint" or basis for anything. Good, we can move on from that.

 

OrdinaryClay wrote:
So you are agreeing the judge has an effect?
If by "effect" you mean "ability to punish after the fact, only if the cheating is detected by a highly fallible method of detection", then of course.


If you mean "effect" as in "causes people to make positive moral choices", then no.

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


butterbattle
ModeratorSuperfan
butterbattle's picture
Posts: 3945
Joined: 2008-09-12
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:Anyone else see

Magus wrote:

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival.  It suggest that morals are only useful for the aftermath of life and not life.  If however you concede that morals are useful you have thus demonstrated that a deity is not needed in order for it or arise in a given social group.

Or do I have this wrong?

I think you're right.

So, instead of a God being the judge, it could be "other people," or "culture," or "the law." It doesn't matter as long as it has a significant effect on the behavior of the two players.  

Edit: Actually, hahaha, the biggest variable would be our moral intuition, wouldn't it? Jeez, look how much stuff the OP left out.  

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


Thomathy
Superfan
Thomathy's picture
Posts: 1861
Joined: 2007-08-20
User is offlineOffline
...goddidit.

...goddidit.


Nordmann
atheist
Nordmann's picture
Posts: 904
Joined: 2008-04-02
User is offlineOffline
Hey - we're all coming round

Hey - we're all coming round to the game I suggested.

 

Great! I'll set up the board. Ok - can anyone suggest a scruple we can start with before any moral standards apply?

 

Wait a moment ...

I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy


theotherguy
theotherguy's picture
Posts: 294
Joined: 2007-01-07
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Let's set

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Let's set up a simple game. We'll call it Moral. It is a two person non-zero sum game.

Suppose you have the following conditions for the game:
1) A moral choice that each player agrees exists. Each player has two available strategies: one, make the moral choice (do the right thing), and two, not make the moral choice (cheat).
2) Defined individually preferred payoffs based on adherence to this moral choice, where the payoff is greater for either player if that player can silently cheat the system.

The game does not rely on what the exact details of the moral choice is only that the players agree what it is. As it exists both players when acting with rational self interest will choose to cheat.

Suppose we add a third condition:
3) A third party judge that both players believe exists and is omniscient and fair. Both players also agree that this judge can punish cheating by reducing payoffs to zero.

The game does not rely on the judge actually existing only that the players believe he exists. The judge adds the component of complete knowledge. If the omniscient judge does not exist and there is no notion of complete knowledge the players are more prone to cheat the system.
 

You don't need a third party judge to arbitrate in this case, all you need is for the people to have conscious, rational minds and an ethics system. The third party "judge" is reason itself. Person A does the "right thing" because it is RIGHT; not because it is in his SELF-INTEREST. Person B does likewise. All that is required is that they share an ethics system and have a conscience.

Game theory is enlightening when studying actual human behavior, but it says nothing about ethics. I would posit that humans probably do behave in the way you describe, but this doesn't mean that they SHOULD.

EDIT: I want to clarify that the reason this is so is because all game-theoretic proofs rely on the axiom "People are rational and act in their self interest at all times." People may have ethics systems which REQUIRE them at times to act against their own self interest.

 


KSMB
Scientist
KSMB's picture
Posts: 702
Joined: 2006-08-03
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:Anyone else see

Magus wrote:
Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival.  It suggest that morals are only useful for the aftermath of life and not life.  If however you concede that morals are useful you have thus demonstrated that a deity is not needed in order for it or arise in a given social group.

Or do I have this wrong?

Yeah, it's pretty typical behavior of people who prioritize the fantasy of an afterlife instead of the reality of the one life they actually have.


Magus
High Level DonorModerator
Magus's picture
Posts: 592
Joined: 2007-04-11
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:You had a

OrdinaryClay wrote:

You had a good argument going there, but now you have resorted to word mincing. Perception can act as payoff as you speculated when you said "and the accomplishment is diminished because it isn't really their own accomplishment".

What I will admit is that the first case/example I gave was not sufficient to make my point.

My second example was added because it didn't contain "perceived gain", but actual gain that is why I used it.  The quote you are using is only available in the first case.  If I didn't think there was some problem with the first case I gave then I wouldn't have used a second one. 

Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.


jcgadfly
Superfan
Posts: 6791
Joined: 2006-07-18
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:JillSwift

OrdinaryClay wrote:

JillSwift wrote:

jcgadfly wrote:

LIke this maybe (for the other side)?

1. Sins can be considered immoral acts.

2. Christians have a God that forgives them of their sins.

3. This forgiveness removes all penalties associated with sins.

4. Therefore, Christians have a greater potential to commit immoral acts.

That would be a great start.

We need evidence that atheists don't have the same sort of "remorse healing" mechanism as Christians sans God.
 

That's easy enough. Humans can forgive other humans but some form of restitution is usualy required.

God's forgiveness doesn't require such. I've heard stories of God impressing people to do so but nothing that rendered the forgiveness invalid if it wasn't done.

Also, you've never heard of the grieving process (depending on the severity of the infraction)?

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin


Magus
High Level DonorModerator
Magus's picture
Posts: 592
Joined: 2007-04-11
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Magus

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Magus wrote:

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival. 

How did you get this from any of my words?
 

If atheist morals are "inferior" you imply they are less useful.  The only actions that can be considered immoral to "only a theist" would be an act that has no negative physical impact on the society or individuals and only an impact on what gods considers to do with them after they die.  So are there immoral acts that don't affect the individuals or society in this life that you can support to exist?  Otherwise all moral actions can be achieved through the use of non-theistic means.  ( I used non-theistic because atheism has nothing to do with morals)

 

Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.


BostonRedSox
Troll
Posts: 84
Joined: 2009-04-18
User is offlineOffline
HisWillness

HisWillness wrote:

BostonRedSox wrote:
You have given me a reasonable model regarding the genesis of moral knowledge.  But telling me how we make an inference to moral principles does not justify them.

So can I not say that harm to others is an intrinsically unpleasant thing? In the "absolute morals" case, justification takes the form of referencing a written document, so I think it's debatable which method of arriving at justification is superior: determining the level of social unpleasantness, or consulting the manual.

Harm to others is intrinsically unpleasant because the conventional definition of "harm" is bound up with that which is morally evil.  Therefore, your statement is essentially a tautology.  You would still have the daunting task of justifying to me what you believe falls under the category of "harm."  

If by "harm," you merely refer to the administration of physical or mental pain (or the physical processes associated with such) on another being, you still have not posited any sort of functional model for building a sound values system, since pain could be construed as a good thing in certain situations, such as those situations where it is necessary to make a certain medical diagnosis.

Justification, in this instance, has nothing to do with referencing any sort of document.  If you were to adopt any sort of fair minded view of the theist position, you would realize that the principles are in the document because they are justified, not vice versa.  But I had not even referenced any sort of document in my post, so you are creating a straw man.

Justification is not something that is measurable in degrees.  A statement is either true or it is false.  In order for it to be true, you must prove that it is true.  If you have not proven it to be true, then you have not justified your position.  For you to say, "I think it's debatable which method of arriving at justification is superior: determining the level of social unpleasantness, or consulting the manual" suggests that both of our mutually exclusive principles are justified but that because your "means" of justification is superior to mine that the truth value of your statement is more justified than mine, which is unintelligible.

Quote:
That's not true at all. "Do no harm" is more specific than "don't be immoral", because the latter assumes a pre-existing moral system.Keep in mind that I'm creating "rules" that nobody will actually be able to follow all the time (like the 10 commandments) in order to illustrate how easy it is for people to come up with them. I'm not suggesting that they're practical.

What I've said was that "Do no harm" was as functionally useless as "do not be immoral." I've even explicitly stated that atheists can be good.  The issue, which you've yet to resolve, is the degree to which an atheist can offer an objective rational basis for why they are being good.  At best, atheists have a set of principles which can be true under certain arbitrary preconditions, which means that the values system itself is arbitrary.  Or even worse, morality gets reduced from the highest good to a means to an end, which itself is based on the potentially misguided "needs" of finite beings.  

Quote:
Not entirely arbitrary, if we're going to be honest in this discussion. Theft and murder are two things universally recognized as harmful. Why? Well, it can't be because we all have the same rulebook, because we know we don't all have the same rulebook. If it's something inherent in us to revile theft and murder in societies, is that arbitrary?

The notion that theft and murder are universally recognized as being harmful is conjectural and unmeasurable for any finite being.  At best, it is a probabilistic assumption which you'll have to accept on faith.  To say anything but would be a statement of omniscience.  But beyond that, simply because something is conventionally agreed upon does not prove that the agreed upon principle is true or false.  So yes, if you are going to argue on those grounds, then your basis is arbitrary for two reasons: (1) The truth or falsity is not proven, and (2) even if it was true that everyone in the world agreed that theft and murder were bad, there would still be the potential for some people to start disagreeing.

Quote:
(1) Is flawed because of its phrasing of "physical laws". Physical laws in the scientific sense are not things to be followed, they're descriptions of how the world works. We observe at various levels different chaotic and probabilistic dynamics in the physical world, so your characterization of "obeying physical laws" is based on outdated Enlightenment-era Cartesian thought that hasn't been very seriously considered for about 200 years. It also assumes an extremely linear process of cause-and-effect that can't be demonstrated in the physical world.

(2) True. If a person has no responsibility, a person is blameless.

(3) This is a jump even if I grant you (1), which is demonstrably false. You're appealing to ignorance, here, and assuming exhaustive knowledge of the chemical processes of the body as completely deterministic and linear.

You are merely arguing against the structure of my sentence and you have not addressed the premise itself, which I will take responsibility for.  I was not trying to say that physical objects obey some group of prescriptive laws in the same way that, say, a human being obeys a law against speeding.  Such adherence to prescriptive laws is, in fact, not necessitated by the prescriptive laws themselves.  Natural science actually operates under the opposite assumption, namely, that the universe will behave in a certain way that is rational and quantifiable, though the information may not be fully decoded by us.  But at the heart of the assumption is the idea of necessitation.  Given certain preconditions, what happens is what must happen.  If the preconditions were exactly the same, then the same event would reoccur.  In that respect, natural science presumes a certain consistency in the behavior of physical things.  Any denials of this will compromise the integrity of natural science, whose fundamental purpose is to understand the intelligence inherent in the universe so that we can operate with more control over our daily lives. Even if it was true that such preconditions, especially at the micro level, are unlikely to reoccur, that does not change the general principle of necessitation.  Therefore, the physicalist does commit himself to determinism and cannot account for objective morality under his worldview.


Eloise
TheistBronze Member
Eloise's picture
Posts: 1808
Joined: 2007-05-26
User is offlineOffline
Eloise wrote:OrdinaryClay

Eloise wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Eloise wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

 If the omniscient judge does not exist and there is no notion of complete knowledge the players are more prone to cheat the system.
 

And if the payoff for "cheating" is not greater than that for following the agreed moral rational players wouldn't favour "cheating" regardless.

So, what is your reason for setting the payoff so high? How does that choice relate to atheism and morality?

This is a good observation. Cheating by definition involves greater payoff, or at least the perception of greater payoff.

Will has already said what I am trying to point out here but I'll reiterate. You provided the definition, "cheating" as a premise. You need to back up that premise with some information on how Option 2 constitutes cheating and what particular relevance that reasoning has to the real world scenario you're trying to model - because, it's not clear by all in your argument that taking option 2 "other than the agreed moral" = "cheating".

 

Ordinary Clay wrote:

Can you think of any perfect cheating that does not provide a payoff greater then not cheating.
 

Yes. The title of the game is moral, and yes, perfect moral cheating can have a lower payoff. OOps I've run out of time.. I will be back to complete this post.

Now that Will is finishing all my sentences for me, keeping my promise has become kind of redundant, but anyhow... as he said, harm is intrinsically an unpleasant thing - though I wouldn't strictly use the word 'harm', myself, as I find 'violation' is the sharper way to define it. 

Violation follows directly from having defined an individual since this logically requires boundaries and violation precisely defines transgression of a boundary. That is to say, if you have individuals then you have boundaries and, by extension, intrusion exists and intrusion is inherently unpleasant. Underlying just about all moral claims, is this principle.

Now, perfect moral cheating, then, comes down to intruding on an individual. Generally speaking a boundary exists between A. the player and B. not the player - this defines him as an individual - entering the second space (B) can be done one of two ways :

1. Morally - by agreed permissibility

2. Immorally - without agreed permissibility

So take the example of human sexual contact since it's been brought up in the thread. Which of these two has the greater payoff, permitted contact or prohibited contact?

Weighing up the pros and cons of each demonstrates that permitted contact is not without its bonuses. Reciprocation, repetition, duration... these all follow permitted contact while the bonuses of prohibited contact pretty much begin and end at being able to give some, at will. It's conceivable that a higher payoff for taking the moral route is appropriate in this case, is it not?

Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist

www.mathematicianspictures.com


ClockCat
ClockCat's picture
Posts: 2265
Joined: 2009-03-26
User is offlineOffline
BostonRedSox wrote:ClockCat

BostonRedSox wrote:

ClockCat wrote:

Morality is entirely subjective. No one has the exact same moral set, even people that follow the same religion.

Everything was moral at some point to someone out there. Pedophilia was a moral lifestyle in ancient Greece, and in fact was very common and approved of.

Things change depending on if the society thinks something is harming it or not. It is just a change in the social contract that determines what most people view as morals.

If you were required to kill someone to live, because of say limited resources, that choice would likely not be considered immoral.

The social contract is ultimately what decides most of this. It nearly always trumps any religion in any area, simply because society wants to better itself, and protect itself as a whole. That is why christians choose to ignore things like Leviticus, because it is not socially acceptable....society has decided that things the bible approves of like slavery, stoning women for speaking out, and killing gays indiscriminately...are evil.

Of course, christians usually just try and overlook those passages, because they will not find fault in their own religion no matter what is pointed to them. When people come out to try and follow their religion 100%, they are usually called extremists even though they are adhering to the barbaric rules their holy text put forth by a society thousands of years ago.

Because that society was severely underdeveloped compared to most of the ones around today.

If morality is subjective, then you have absolutely no basis for morally evaluating the actions of other people.  You cannot tell murderers, pedophiles, rapists and thieves that they are wrong for what they do.  Human minds are different and their morality may be different from yours.  According to your worldview, their values system is equally as valid as yours, just as your taste in art or music is no better or worse than mine.

 

Biiingo. We have a winner. Welcome to the real world.

 

 

The social contract is what decides it, by being part of a group you agree to abide by certain rules of that group along with everyone else.

 

Just because you think your rules are better, doesn't make them better.

Theism is why we can't have nice things.


treat2 (not verified)
Posts: 4294964976
Joined: 1969-12-31
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Let's set

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Let's set up a simple game....The game does not rely on the judge actually existing only that the players believe he exists....

Quick question...

Do the players take it "on faith" that the judge exists?

BTW. How did "118 NEW" posts get posted in the 2 minutes from my previous logon?

Is that part of the game, too?


BostonRedSox
Troll
Posts: 84
Joined: 2009-04-18
User is offlineOffline
ClockCat wrote:Biiingo. We

ClockCat wrote:

Biiingo. We have a winner. Welcome to the real world.

In the real world, there is a presupposed framework of right and wrong that underlies humanity, based on the metaphysical principle that human life has a value and sanctity not found anywhere else in the animal kingdom.  This is why we do not release the Manson girls from prison or why we sent our soldiers into Germany during the Holocaust.  Under your worldview, we may as well have let the Holocaust go on because the morality of the Nazis was just as valid as ours.

Quote:
Just because you think your rules are better, doesn't make them better.

Agreed.  My rules are better... because they are better.  Not because of what I think.

 


butterbattle
ModeratorSuperfan
butterbattle's picture
Posts: 3945
Joined: 2008-09-12
User is offlineOffline
BostonRedSox wrote:Under

BostonRedSox wrote:

Under your worldview, we may as well have let the Holocaust go on because the morality of the Nazis was just as valid as ours.

So, if you didn't believe in God, you would just turn the blind eye to genocide and shrug when people rape little kids? 

 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


BostonRedSox
Troll
Posts: 84
Joined: 2009-04-18
User is offlineOffline
butterbattle wrote:So, if

butterbattle wrote:

So, if you didn't believe in God, you would just turn the blind eye to genocide and shrug when people rape little kids? 

I would probably be like most atheists and act a certain way while being, at the same time, in capable of giving a rational account for why my actions are morally right.  Atheists are capable of acting moral.  They just cannot account for morality in a rational way.


Nordmann
atheist
Nordmann's picture
Posts: 904
Joined: 2008-04-02
User is offlineOffline
Quote:Atheists are capable

Quote:

Atheists are capable of acting moral.  They just cannot account for morality in a rational way.

 

I am an atheist with a standard of morality by which I behave generally morally good. I can account for morality in a rational way.

 

What in the name of fuck are you on about now Sox?

 

I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
JillSwift wrote:OrdinaryClay

JillSwift wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

The question marks represent free variables. As we just demonstrated atheist beliefs result in behaviors as do Christian beliefs. If you believe the question marks can not be filled in for atheists then you must believe they can not be filled in for Christians. (Note: Sometimes the best teacher is experience)

So, you are agreeing that atheism isn't a "viewpoint" or basis for anything. Good, we can move on from that.

I'm not sure how you concluded that from what I said. Atheists have beliefs (not believing is a belief). These beliefs constitute a viewpoint.
 

Quote:

 

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Quote:

As for the OP: Why isn't it possible for a society's enforcement of broadly agreed upon morals/rules be the actor in the position of "judge"? That always seems to be the one workable godless moral system that gets totally ignored.

So you are agreeing the judge has an effect?

If by "effect" you mean "ability to punish after the fact, only if the cheating is detected by a highly fallible method of detection", then of course.

If you mean "effect" as in "causes people to make positive moral choices", then no.

You were talking about a godless moral system.  Why would anyone want a judge that produced negative moral choices?
 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
butterbattle wrote:So,

butterbattle wrote:

So, instead of a God being the judge, it could be "other people," or "culture," or "the law." It doesn't matter as long as it has a significant effect on the behavior of the two players.  

Edit: Actually, hahaha, the biggest variable would be our moral intuition, wouldn't it? Jeez, look how much stuff the OP left out.  

So you are in effect agreeing that having the judge in place is better. Your only distinction is which judge. Sure if the players do not believe the judge exists then that judge does not apply to them, but for those that do believe he applies. The stronger the belief in omniscience the better the judge. Which bolsters my point.

I'll address the moral intuition question in my reply to the theotherguy.
 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
theotherguy wrote:You don't

theotherguy wrote:

You don't need a third party judge to arbitrate in this case, all you need is for the people to have conscious, rational minds and an ethics system. The third party "judge" is reason itself. Person A does the "right thing" because it is RIGHT; not because it is in his SELF-INTEREST. Person B does likewise. All that is required is that they share an ethics system and have a conscience.

Game theory is enlightening when studying actual human behavior, but it says nothing about ethics. I would posit that humans probably do behave in the way you describe, but this doesn't mean that they SHOULD.

EDIT: I want to clarify that the reason this is so is because all game-theoretic proofs rely on the axiom "People are rational and act in their self interest at all times." People may have ethics systems which REQUIRE them at times to act against their own self interest. 

Ethical behavior is actual human behavior. If you agree that people do behave with rational self interest then what they "should" do is not relevant. Adding a conscience to the players is equivalent to adding randomness to their choice of strategies (note: even if you argue the individual conscience is not random it is still random across players). Even with a mixed strategy such as this we can expect cheating as long as the average payoff for cheating is greater. If we argue the mixed strategy (produced by the conscience) is biased toward not cheating we will still result in cheating if the payoff is great enough as this will increase the expected gain for cheating.

The net is that adding a real life conscience just dampens cheating. Our base behavior still tends toward rational self interest especially with high gains and low chance of getting caught. Our drive toward self interest allows us to rationalize.
 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:OrdinaryClay

Magus wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

You had a good argument going there, but now you have resorted to word mincing. Perception can act as payoff as you speculated when you said "and the accomplishment is diminished because it isn't really their own accomplishment".

What I will admit is that the first case/example I gave was not sufficient to make my point.

My second example was added because it didn't contain "perceived gain", but actual gain that is why I used it.  The quote you are using is only available in the first case.  If I didn't think there was some problem with the first case I gave then I wouldn't have used a second one. 

Ok, I can not read your mind. The bottom line is that perceived gain matters.
 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Magus wrote:OrdinaryClay

Magus wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Magus wrote:

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival. 

How did you get this from any of my words?
 

If atheist morals are "inferior" you imply they are less useful. 

I did not make any determination about the moral in the game. The inferior refers to the system not the moral. The system or framework is inferior in the sense that it results in more cheating.


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Eloise wrote:Violation

Eloise wrote:

Violation follows directly from having defined an individual since this logically requires boundaries and violation precisely defines transgression of a boundary. That is to say, if you have individuals then you have boundaries and, by extension, intrusion exists and intrusion is inherently unpleasant. Underlying just about all moral claims, is this principle.

Now, perfect moral cheating, then, comes down to intruding on an individual. Generally speaking a boundary exists between A. the player and B. not the player - this defines him as an individual - entering the second space (B) can be done one of two ways :

1. Morally - by agreed permissibility

2. Immorally - without agreed permissibility

I understand your description. While I would not agree that all moral choices fall into your categorization your example is a very good one.
 

Quote:

So take the example of human sexual contact since it's been brought up in the thread. Which of these two has the greater payoff, permitted contact or prohibited contact?

Weighing up the pros and cons of each demonstrates that permitted contact is not without its bonuses. Reciprocation, repetition, duration... these all follow permitted contact while the bonuses of prohibited contact pretty much begin and end at being able to give some, at will. It's conceivable that a higher payoff for taking the moral route is appropriate in this case, is it not?

I agree cheating in this case will result in less gain for a rational individual. I also agree that using your construct we could build further scenarios with similar results. Now let me frame this in my original game. The total set of Moral games would be the set of all games for all moral choices. There would be a subset that have choices that fall into your category - i.e. cheating has less of a payoff then not cheating. Assuming rational individuals, in these cases neither our conscience nor a judge would have any effect in the result of the game. So this set can be discarded as uninteresting in this analysis. It may not be intrinsically uninteresting, but it is uninteresting in the sense that it will not provide insight into cheating. There still remains the other set of choices (game subset) in which my observation still holds.
 


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
treat2 wrote:OrdinaryClay

treat2 wrote:
OrdinaryClay wrote:

Let's set up a simple game....The game does not rely on the judge actually existing only that the players believe he exists....

Quick question... Do the players take it "on faith" that the judge exists?

It does not matter.  All that matters is that the players believe the judge to be omniscient and fair.


Eloise
TheistBronze Member
Eloise's picture
Posts: 1808
Joined: 2007-05-26
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:I

OrdinaryClay wrote:

I understand your description. While I would not agree that all moral choices fall into your categorization your example is a very good one.

I say "just about" all moral claims come down to the question of crossing the boundaries of an identity, whereas, I would like to just say "all" but it is a big set. Some form of induction (which I haven't bothered to think through yet) is probably required to back such a claim. Intuitively, I think it does apply to all morality, but I'll concede I haven't supported that at this point.

 

Quote:

I agree cheating in this case will result in less gain for a rational individual. I also agree that using your construct we could build further scenarios with similar results.

noted... appreciated.

 

Quote:

Now let me frame this in my original game. The total set of Moral games would be the set of all games for all moral choices. There would be a subset that have choices that fall into your category - i.e. cheating has less of a payoff then not cheating. Assuming rational individuals, in these cases neither our conscience nor a judge would have any effect in the result of the game. So this set can be discarded as uninteresting in this analysis. It may not be intrinsically uninteresting, but it is uninteresting in the sense that it will not provide insight into cheating.

Well, I suppose... but I was under the impression that the exercise was in gaining insight into the position of godless bases for morality. Wouldn't you say that a strong argument for the existence and efficacy of a godless morality weakens the conclusion implied by the title of this thread?

Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist

www.mathematicianspictures.com


OrdinaryClay
Theist
Posts: 440
Joined: 2009-04-19
User is offlineOffline
Eloise wrote:Quote:Now let

Eloise wrote:


Quote:

Now let me frame this in my original game. The total set of Moral games would be the set of all games for all moral choices. There would be a subset that have choices that fall into your category - i.e. cheating has less of a payoff then not cheating. Assuming rational individuals, in these cases neither our conscience nor a judge would have any effect in the result of the game. So this set can be discarded as uninteresting in this analysis. It may not be intrinsically uninteresting, but it is uninteresting in the sense that it will not provide insight into cheating.

Well, I suppose... but I was under the impression that the exercise was in gaining insight into the position of godless bases for morality. Wouldn't you say that a strong argument for the existence and efficacy of a godless morality weakens the conclusion implied by the title of this thread?

The thread is intended to draw a distinction between two moral constructs, true. The distinction I'm drawing is that one is superior in that it will result in less cheating. I am not arguing that one results in no cheating and the other results in total cheating. Where on that scale an individual falls is a very complicated issue, but the basic abstract analysis I've made has merit and weight because our rational self interest driven behaviors are undeniable and very relevant even in complicated social and personal scenarios.

 


jcgadfly
Superfan
Posts: 6791
Joined: 2006-07-18
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Eloise

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Eloise wrote:

 

Quote:

Now let me frame this in my original game. The total set of Moral games would be the set of all games for all moral choices. There would be a subset that have choices that fall into your category - i.e. cheating has less of a payoff then not cheating. Assuming rational individuals, in these cases neither our conscience nor a judge would have any effect in the result of the game. So this set can be discarded as uninteresting in this analysis. It may not be intrinsically uninteresting, but it is uninteresting in the sense that it will not provide insight into cheating.

Well, I suppose... but I was under the impression that the exercise was in gaining insight into the position of godless bases for morality. Wouldn't you say that a strong argument for the existence and efficacy of a godless morality weakens the conclusion implied by the title of this thread?

The thread is intended to draw a distinction between two moral constructs, true. The distinction I'm drawing is that one is superior in that it will result in less cheating. I am not arguing that one results in no cheating and the other results in total cheating. Where on that scale an individual falls is a very complicated issue, but the basic abstract analysis I've made has merit and weight because our rational self interest driven behaviors are undeniable and very relevant even in complicated social and personal scenarios.

 

Except you leave out so much information which makes your game a cheat in itself.

You leave out the possibility of the atheist who says "I could cheat but that would ruin the game and hurt my opponent so I won't"

You leave out the possibility of the Christian who says "I can cheat? Well, that might hurt my opponent and I'm taking a risk but the judge will forgive me if I ask him (if you're asuming the judge to be the Christian God - you are of course because you're trying to push your moral system as superior)"

 

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin


SSBBJunky
Superfan
Posts: 209
Joined: 2009-02-06
User is offlineOffline
BostonRedSox wrote:SSBBJunky

BostonRedSox wrote:

SSBBJunky wrote:

So you agree that God changed his mind on what was morally right and wrong? Doesn't that fly right in the face of the god-given objective morality? Or did God order the Israelites to do things that he knew were 'wrong'?

Can you give a specific example or passage?  

How 'bout this one?

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46)

BostonRedSox wrote:

In the real world, there is a presupposed framework of right and wrong that underlies humanity, based on the metaphysical principle that human life has a value and sanctity not found anywhere else in the animal kingdom. 

Did you pull that metaphysical principle out of your ass?

jcgadfly wrote:

Except you leave out so much information which makes your game a cheat in itself.

You leave out the possibility of the atheist who says "I could cheat but that would ruin the game and hurt my opponent so I won't"

You leave out the possibility of the Christian who says "I can cheat? Well, that might hurt my opponent and I'm taking a risk but the judge will forgive me if I ask him (if you're asuming the judge to be the Christian God - you are of course because you're trying to push your moral system as superior)"

 

Clay, Im pretty sure you still haven't addressed this.

''Black Holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.''


JillSwift
Superfan
JillSwift's picture
Posts: 1758
Joined: 2008-01-13
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:I'm not

OrdinaryClay wrote:
I'm not sure how you concluded that from what I said. Atheists have beliefs (not believing is a belief). These beliefs constitute a viewpoint.
Not believing is a belief? Not collecting stamps is a hobby. Bald is a hair color.


OrdinaryClay wrote:
You were talking about a godless moral system.  Why would anyone want a judge that produced negative moral choices?
Don't be thick. It the causative part I take issue with.

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


Gauche
atheist
Gauche's picture
Posts: 1565
Joined: 2007-01-18
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:The

OrdinaryClay wrote:

The thread is intended to draw a distinction between two moral constructs, true. The distinction I'm drawing is that one is superior in that it will result in less cheating. I am not arguing that one results in no cheating and the other results in total cheating. Where on that scale an individual falls is a very complicated issue, but the basic abstract analysis I've made has merit and weight because our rational self interest driven behaviors are undeniable and very relevant even in complicated social and personal scenarios.

 

 

You've not taken into account that people have interests other than reducing cheating and presented authoritarianism as the solution to cheating. It may be superior in the sense that it results in less cheating but it's not the most elegant solution. It's the most heavy-handed solution displaying the least amount of consideration for human dignity. What you've presented here is explicitly totalitarian.

There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft


Magus
High Level DonorModerator
Magus's picture
Posts: 592
Joined: 2007-04-11
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Magus

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Magus wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

You had a good argument going there, but now you have resorted to word mincing. Perception can act as payoff as you speculated when you said "and the accomplishment is diminished because it isn't really their own accomplishment".

What I will admit is that the first case/example I gave was not sufficient to make my point.

My second example was added because it didn't contain "perceived gain", but actual gain that is why I used it.  The quote you are using is only available in the first case.  If I didn't think there was some problem with the first case I gave then I wouldn't have used a second one. 

Ok, I can not read your mind. The bottom line is that perceived gain matters.
 

What is the perceived gain in the second example, and how does it matter?

[Edit:]

I cannot read your mind either, your subject says nothing about the "system" but that the morality is inferior.  Are you moving the goal post? 

[End edit]

 

Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.


HisWillness
atheistRational VIP!
HisWillness's picture
Posts: 4100
Joined: 2008-02-21
User is offlineOffline
BostonRedSox wrote:If by

BostonRedSox wrote:
If by "harm," you merely refer to the administration of physical or mental pain (or the physical processes associated with such) on another being, you still have not posited any sort of functional model for building a sound values system, since pain could be construed as a good thing in certain situations, such as those situations where it is necessary to make a certain medical diagnosis.

That's an interesting little side-step. Maybe I misunderstood your original idea. When you say an atheistic morality is "inferior", I have to ask myself "inferior to what?" The only thing that comes to mind is the variety of book-based theological moralities, and those have none of the functional models or instructions for situations of medical diagnosis. How is a value system "sound"? Theft, as well, can be a good thing, if you're removing drugs from the hands of an addict.

You may be attacking a difficulty with rule-based morality, rather than exercising moral judgement. An atheist is in the position of using moral judgement at all times, based on cultural influences. I don't see that as any different functionally than any theist, seeing as for the theist, the extra cultural influence would be a church community, and an interpretation of the will of the favoured deity (usually through a divinely-inspired text).

BostonRedSox wrote:
Justification, in this instance, has nothing to do with referencing any sort of document.  If you were to adopt any sort of fair minded view of the theist position, you would realize that the principles are in the document because they are justified, not vice versa.  But I had not even referenced any sort of document in my post, so you are creating a straw man.

First, I'm not creating a straw man. I just can't think of any theology that doesn't involve a set of documents that describe a god or gods for followers of same. Maybe you happen to follow a religion that has no document associated with it, and that's your argument, but I strongly doubt it. You'll have to explain to me how you get the principles being justified, and then ending up in a document, because that would mean that the atheist is in no inferior position to the theist in forming a morality. After all, if the principles exist outside of the texts usually used as explication of theistic morality, then we all have access to an intrinsic moral sense, regardless of your particular theology (or lack thereof).

BostonRedSox wrote:
The issue, which you've yet to resolve, is the degree to which an atheist can offer an objective rational basis for why they are being good.  At best, atheists have a set of principles which can be true under certain arbitrary preconditions, which means that the values system itself is arbitrary.  Or even worse, morality gets reduced from the highest good to a means to an end, which itself is based on the potentially misguided "needs" of finite beings.

You bring a pretty heavy bias to this statement, of which you should be made aware: that objective morality is the best possible morality. That has not been demonstrated. Many atheists, like me, are moral relativists. That's not to say morals are strictly relative, seeing as harm to others -- insofar as you've noted that's vague -- has a detrimental social effect. So maybe "semi-relative" is more accurate. It's the reality of the world, though, that different cultures have different values and different morals. I don't know how you would argue with that; it's simply what one sees traveling around the world. It's difficult to see even that an objective morality could exist.

BostonRedSox wrote:
At best, it is a probabilistic assumption which you'll have to accept on faith.  To say anything but would be a statement of omniscience.  But beyond that, simply because something is conventionally agreed upon does not prove that the agreed upon principle is true or false.

I have no problem conceding that my idea that theft and murder were universal principles were guesses. They were. I just couldn't think of a culture that was okay with theft and murder. Also, where we seem to be having difficulty is with the idea of an absolute "right" and "wrong", such that when police confiscate drugs that are illegal in their country, they aren't stealing from someone, they're within their rights to remove someone's property from them. Personally, I see no evidence for an absolute "right" and "wrong" in nature. While they may exist as Platonic Forms, you'd have to demonstrate any reason to consider them practical for behaving morally. (That is, for moral reasoning.)

BostonRedSox wrote:
I was not trying to say that physical objects obey some group of prescriptive laws in the same way that, say, a human being obeys a law against speeding.  Such adherence to prescriptive laws is, in fact, not necessitated by the prescriptive laws themselves.  Natural science actually operates under the opposite assumption, namely, that the universe will behave in a certain way that is rational and quantifiable, though the information may not be fully decoded by us.  But at the heart of the assumption is the idea of necessitation.  Given certain preconditions, what happens is what must happen.  If the preconditions were exactly the same, then the same event would reoccur.

That's a misrepresentation of modern scientific thought. Full stop. That understanding of physics is what you get in a classical mechanics course, maybe first and second year, but that's 17th century. Please give that notion up. 

BostonRedSox wrote:
In that respect, natural science presumes a certain consistency in the behavior of physical things.  Any denials of this will compromise the integrity of natural science, whose fundamental purpose is to understand the intelligence inherent in the universe so that we can operate with more control over our daily lives. Even if it was true that such preconditions, especially at the micro level, are unlikely to reoccur, that does not change the general principle of necessitation.  Therefore, the physicalist does commit himself to determinism and cannot account for objective morality under his worldview.

Natural science presumes a certain consistency in certain modes of discussion, like classical mechanics. Naturally, that kind of math is good enough for engineers, but for a discussion of this kind, it's not appropriate. The "general principal of necessitation", in the way you've presented it, is not reproducible at all (not just "unlikely to reoccur" ). That is, you can't make the same event happen twice exactly the same. You can posit a probability that it will happen in a certain way (thus the more current probability-based model) but exact reproduction is demonstrably impossible. Thus, strict determinism does not play out at any level.

If you're using the term "necessitation" in its more modern sense, relating to universals, you have a long uphill climb to show that your line of reasoning competes favourably with empiricism.

I also don't know where you got the idea that science's "fundamental purpose is to understand the intelligence inherent in the universe". That's very much off-base for someone using jargon like "necessitation". If you're going to be precise in one area and not the other, it confuses the discussion. Science isn't searching for an intelligence.

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


Magus
High Level DonorModerator
Magus's picture
Posts: 592
Joined: 2007-04-11
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Magus

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Magus wrote:

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Magus wrote:

Anyone else see that the OP implies that morals are not useful to society or people in general.  And that not having this would have no impact on the way we survival. 

How did you get this from any of my words?
 

If atheist morals are "inferior" you imply they are less useful. 

I did not make any determination about the moral in the game. The inferior refers to the system not the moral. The system or framework is inferior in the sense that it results in more cheating.

So what you are saying is that since you get moral from god an unverifiable source it is superior, than a verifiable source that takes benificial actions to a society and the individuals?

Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
Since both the existence of

Since both the existence of a God and the 'goodness' of such an supposed entity are inherently unverifiable, a rule system based on such ideas is the truly arbitrary one. Any rules associated with such a system actually derive ultimately from the same mix of societal processes and evolved constraints on behavior necessitated by living in a group as social species that naturally emerge over time. We see similar but simpler, non-intellectualized versions in most if not all social species.

The scenarios in the OP are valid but not actually relevant to morality, rather to the fairly obvious but unremarkable 'insight' that imposing disincentives for a particular set of behaviors will tend to reduce the frequency of those behaviors, but only to the extent that 'rational self-interest' is actually applied to decisions whether or not to indulge in the behavior.

Such a system would be more effective if is some punishment is applied immediately whenever an infraction ('cheating') is detected, rather than delayed until some indefinite time in the future as in the 'heaven and hell' scenario of Christianity, or the Karma idea of Buddhism.

It would probably be even more effective if direct physical pain was inflicted, especially against the more compulsive/impulsive sorts of behavior which involve little or no rational decision-making.

So the 'game', taken to its 'logical' conclusion, makes an argument for an Authoritarian regime with 100% surveillance and 'Gitmo' style torture, especially if the justification if purely that one system leads to less 'bad' behavior. 

EDIT: So the scenario says nothing really relevant to the title of the thread. Dogma based ideologies, aimed at some ultimate 'ideal' religious or economic or racial 'order' are typically more likely to lead to abuses of those who don't agree or can't fit in to the plans, whether 'infidels', 'commies', or 'racially inferior'.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


spotty
spotty's picture
Posts: 2
Joined: 2009-05-08
User is offlineOffline
I realize this may sound off

I realize this may sound off topic, but as I believe this is another thin edge of the wedge type argument I felt I had to register and speak up.

Lets say that theist based morality is more effective in regulating peoples behavior. (I'm not saying it really is, just pursuing the line)

 

I say, so what?

That IN NO WAY supports that theism is true, it only says that morals enforced by a God may make people more afraid of breaking them, or treat them with more significance.

The OP is not a successful argument for theism. It in no way argues for the existence of God, rather it argues that we should believe in God.


HisWillness
atheistRational VIP!
HisWillness's picture
Posts: 4100
Joined: 2008-02-21
User is offlineOffline
spotty wrote:The OP is not a

spotty wrote:

The OP is not a successful argument for theism. It in no way argues for the existence of God, rather it argues that we should believe in God.

At this point, I think we're all arguing even past that. I mean, you're obviously right (and welcome to the boards!) but even beyond that, it has yet to be demonstrated that an objective morality produces a superior result (or even exists, outside of the sense of Platonic Forms).

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


spotty
spotty's picture
Posts: 2
Joined: 2009-05-08
User is offlineOffline
HisWillness wrote:At this

HisWillness wrote:

At this point, I think we're all arguing even past that. I mean, you're obviously right (and welcome to the boards!) but even beyond that, it has yet to be demonstrated that an objective morality produces a superior result (or even exists, outside of the sense of Platonic Forms).

Understood. I'm merely trying to point out the flaw in what I believe to be the OP's master plan.

The originator seems to have started more than 1 thread relating to the assorted "Trappings" of theism. Another for example, attempting to illustrate that faith is not bad because Atheists do it too. I just felt that one should be cautious about being drawn into such arguments when ultimately they are irrelevant in proving or disproving God.

Unless you're just having a fun intellectual excercise, in which case - go for it!


BostonRedSox
Troll
Posts: 84
Joined: 2009-04-18
User is offlineOffline
HisWillness wrote:snipI've

HisWillness wrote:

snip

I've never actually stated that atheist morality is inferior.  That is the original poster's wording. Such a statement would have to presuppose some general consensus among atheists about what is right and wrong and there really is none.  Buddhists and Raelians are both atheists and yet I would assume that their ideas of right and wrong are probably very different.  Likewise, I would assume that your morality is a little different than Stalin's.  

Your interpretation of the theist worldview is demonstrably false.  The means of revelation has nothing to do with the justification of principles.  I may have discovered that it is a bad thing to spit at someone when my father told me that it was bad.  Yet if you were to ask me why it is wrong to spit at someone, I would not simply say, "Because my father said so."  That is an appeal to authority and a logical fallacy.  Once again, you are consistently hung up on the genesis of moral knowledge that you conveniently dodge the actual question:  Why is what you believe to be moral true?  I continually hammer the point home that atheists can be moral.  That does not mean that they can provide a rational account for it.

Under the theist worldview, moral principles are concepts which are inherent in the nature of a divine intellect, which is itself inexorable and has a necessary existence.  Moral principles have an ontological dependence on a mind.  Therefore, in order for any moral principle to be absolute, the mind that thinks it must also be absolute.  Morals are thereby justified through their nature as necessary principles.  They are ends in themselves, which is to say that morality constitutes the highest good, whereas under the secular atheist worldview, morality is typically seen as the means to societal affluence and stability.  Thus, right and wrong ends up being defined by the arbitrary needs of society at some random point in time.  This is pretty implicit in your view, since you are comparing "objective morality" to "subjective morality" as if our values are competing for some reward, whereas my position would be that morality is a reward in itself.

There are different flavors of moral relativism.  They usually look like this:

(1) Different societies and cultures have different moral principles.

(2) Therefore, the different moral principles held by different societies and cultures are all true.

OR

(1) Different societies and cultures have different moral principles.

(2) Therefore, there are no moral principles that are universally true.

(3) Therefore, one ought not to judge the morality of other societies.

Both arguments are non-sequiturs.

Regarding science, you are making this more difficult than it has to be.   The bottom line is, if everything is physical, then every event is a physical event.  Therefore, what happened could not have been otherwise given the circumstances.  You can equivocate on "determinism" all you'd like, it is still determinism.  Everything else you've mentioned is just a red herring.


theotherguy
theotherguy's picture
Posts: 294
Joined: 2007-01-07
User is offlineOffline
OrdinaryClay wrote:Ethical

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Ethical behavior is actual human behavior. If you agree that people do behave with rational self interest then what they "should" do is not relevant. Adding a conscience to the players is equivalent to adding randomness to their choice of strategies (note: even if you argue the individual conscience is not random it is still random across players). Even with a mixed strategy such as this we can expect cheating as long as the average payoff for cheating is greater. If we argue the mixed strategy (produced by the conscience) is biased toward not cheating we will still result in cheating if the payoff is great enough as this will increase the expected gain for cheating.

The entire study of ethics in philosophy is devoted to determining what people "ought" to do, and how people "should" behave. The studies of psychology and sociology focus on how people "actually" behave. How people "should" behave is incredibly relevant to a system of morality and ethics, especially when you're trying to determine which ethics system is "superior" and which is "inferior." These terms that you use are value terms, not quantitative terms. If you use the term "superior," you ought to define it. By what you've been saying so far, it appears to me that you are defining a "superior" ethical system as "that which causes less cheating." It seems to me that you are basing "superiority" on the pragmatic outcome of the system. I would like to explore this presupposition further.
 

OrdinaryClay wrote:

The net is that adding a real life conscience just dampens cheating. Our base behavior still tends toward rational self interest especially with high gains and low chance of getting caught. Our drive toward self interest allows us to rationalize.

I posit that the net effect of adding "real life religion" also "just dampens" cheating. People will still cheat, even if they feel there is a god watching them. There is no difference between a religion and an ethics system except that one is taken on authority and another is taken on reason.

Is rationalization always in response to self-interest? Philosophers usually identify two forms of rationality: that which is "in line with reason," and that which is "in line with self-interest."

Someone could, say, spend an inordinate amount of time giving to others at the expense of their own self-interest because they reason that it is reasonable and ethical for them to do so. Or, someone may believe in nonsense that reason would tell them to avoid because believing in it would be in their own self-interest.  A person may avoid cheating, even when they know they won't be caught, because they use reason and some ethical system to deduce that cheating is wrong. All of them would be considered rational.

 

Now on to your assertion about which ethical systems are "superior" and "inferior." Again, it seems that you are basing this distinction on the outcome of the event with regards to cheating.

P1. "As a whole, people tend to act out of their own self-interest."

P2. "People are less likely to cheat if a judge is watching them (due to P1), because they wouldn't want to be punished." (P1=>P2)

P3. "Atheists do not have judges.  Theists do."

C1. "Atheists are more likely to cheat than theists." (P2^P3=>C1)

P4. "An ethics system that causes people to be more likely to cheat is inferior."

C2. "All atheistic ethics systems are inferior." (C1^P4=>C2)

 

But is P4 really true? Why does this make an ethics system "inferior"? Why is it better that people should live in fear of a judge, and base their actions upon that? Why wouldn't it be better for people to do the right thing IN SPITE of their own self-interest, and instead, do the right thing because they believe that it is right? Even IF theism causes less cheating, is it really worth the cost of having an ethics system based on authority and fear?

 

Suppose that the judge doesn't speak. Suppose that neither player of the game knows anything about the judge. Suppose both have some beliefs about the judge, but only have vauge ideas about what the law is. Suppose some of them don't even agree with or follow some of the laws, but instead choose laws that they themselves feel are reasonable. Suppose neither one knows when or if he will be judged.

 

Now we're getting closer to theism. Both have some idea that there is some kind of judge; but neither knows for certain who or what the judge is. They have some ideas about the law, but don't follow it to the letter. They believe they will be judged, but they know not when or how.

Tell me how this is any different from an ordinary ethics system? It seems to me that theists look at a body of "laws" put forth by religion, and then follow the ones that seem the most reasonable. Each religion has a different law book, and each person follows a different set of laws; mostly of their own choosing. Why not just cut out the middle-man and have people do what they feel is most reasonable?

 

 

 

 


SSBBJunky
Superfan
Posts: 209
Joined: 2009-02-06
User is offlineOffline
SSBBJunky wrote:BostonRedSox

SSBBJunky wrote:

BostonRedSox wrote:

SSBBJunky wrote:

So you agree that God changed his mind on what was morally right and wrong? Doesn't that fly right in the face of the god-given objective morality? Or did God order the Israelites to do things that he knew were 'wrong'?

Can you give a specific example or passage?  

How 'bout this one?

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46)

Am i getting an answer?

''Black Holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.''


BostonRedSox
Troll
Posts: 84
Joined: 2009-04-18
User is offlineOffline
SSBBJunky wrote:How 'bout

SSBBJunky wrote:

How 'bout this one?

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you.  You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land.  You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.  You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.  (Leviticus 25:44-46)

Obviously, the word "slavery" has emotional baggage attached to it, so it is natural that an atheist will bring that up.  It still pushes an emotional button with African Americans, in particular, since their typical lower-class status can be traced to that dark period in American history.  They still feel the effects and, in many ways, are still slaves to a society being run by white people.  Obama is just one person in a large cabinet.

To your question, slavery in biblical times had nothing to do with race.  In biblical times, people willingly became slaves in order to pay off debt.  The practice of kidnapping people and turning them into slaves was condemned by the bible.  

Plus, the word of God will inevitably be interpreted through a community at a particular period in time.  Of course slavery is going to be mentioned in the bible if God revealed himself to the world in that particular century.  


butterbattle
ModeratorSuperfan
butterbattle's picture
Posts: 3945
Joined: 2008-09-12
User is offlineOffline
theotherguy wrote:P1. "As a

theotherguy wrote:

P1. "As a whole, people tend to act out of their own self-interest."

P2. "People are less likely to cheat if a judge is watching them (due to P1), because they wouldn't want to be punished." (P1=>P2)

P3. "Atheists do not have judges.  Theists do."

C1. "Atheists are more likely to cheat than theists." (P2^P3=>C1)

P4. "An ethics system that causes people to be more likely to cheat is inferior."

C2. "All atheistic ethics systems are inferior." (C1^P4=>C2)

Oh my God! I could just tear this whole thing apart so easily. It almost feels wrong.

P1 is a naked assertion. People help each other all the time. Most people, when raised in the right environment, also don't murder, steal, etc. Self-interest isn't necessarily bad either, as long as you don't trespass on the rights of others.

For P2, the judge doesn't have to be God. It could be culture, the law, etc. Also, if there isn't an actual judge, but, rather, a judge that you invented, then this judge will almost always be in your interest; after all, you made it. So, if these judges don't actually exist, then people are still acting in their self-interest, except this time, they can enact dogma and claim divine support for their personal beliefs. Finally, refraining from doing bad things due to fear of punishment is not moral because then it would be in the person's interest to not do bad things. A truly ethical person would be one that didn't do bad things simply because he/she observed that it was the wrong thing to do.

P3. Both atheists and theists have all kinds of judges. Family. Society. Government. Moral conscience. There is one judge that the theist has, which the atheist doesn't have, a supernatural all-powerful entity that is impossible to understand, by definition.

C1. P3 was false, so C1 is unsupported.

P4. Naked assertion. Also, I think liberty is more important than control. Moral systems based on fear remind me of Kohlberg's first stage of moral development.

C2. C1 was unsupported. P4 was also unsupported.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


crazymonkie
Silver Member
crazymonkie's picture
Posts: 336
Joined: 2009-03-09
User is offlineOffline
BostonRedSox wrote:Buddhists

BostonRedSox wrote:

Buddhists and Raelians are both atheists

Buddhism isn't atheism. Read any of the Pali canon. Gods are thick on the ground. They're just tied to the karmic wheel like all other beings- just they live for so long, and are so powerful, that they believe they're not a part of it.

Now, certain Buddhist sects are 'sans gods.' But not Buddhism in itself.

Continue with your regularly scheduled program.

OrdinaryClay wrote:
If you don't believe your non-belief then you don't believe and you must not be an atheist.


butterbattle
ModeratorSuperfan
butterbattle's picture
Posts: 3945
Joined: 2008-09-12
User is offlineOffline
BostonRedSox wrote: In

BostonRedSox wrote:

In biblical times, people willingly became slaves in order to pay off debt.  The practice of kidnapping people and turning them into slaves was condemned by the bible.

Oh, really? What about these?

Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever. Leviticus 25:44-46

"Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Numbers 31:15-18

Quote:
Plus, the word of God will inevitably be interpreted through a community at a particular period in time.  Of course slavery is going to be mentioned in the bible if God revealed himself to the world in that particular century.  

This is irrelevant. The question is whether God condones slavery. If slavery is mentioned at all, it should be God trying to end it, instead of:

"Then the Lord said to Moses..." Exodus 20:22

"If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do." Exodus 21:7

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and slave dies as a result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." Exodus 21:20-21

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare